Dumb Criminals I

Guest Author - Vance R. Rowe

Okay, this week we are going to lighten things up a bit and I will write about one of my favorite crime subjects....DUMB CRIMINALS.

This a couple of stories of some of the dumbest criminals ever to grace the annals of criminal folklore. I researched this collection from all over the Internet but I left the names of the alleged criminals out of my article for them to avoid further embarrassment and ridicule.

Let's start with a story out of Derbyshire, England. Although dumb criminals are one of my favorite crimes to read about, the police stings used to catch dumb criminals run a close second. This particular police sting took place in 2011. Some criminals, dumb or not, are hard to catch sometimes so instead of trying to go out and track a bunch of them out, they go the idea to bring the criminals to them by offering a free gift that is often hard to resist. In this particular sting, nineteen criminals couldn't resist the offer of free beer. The police sent out mailings to known criminals and their last addresses and were instructed to call a number listed in the mailing to set up a time and place to receive the free beer. Nineteen criminals called the number and showed up at their designated locations and instead of beer, they received a free ride to the police station to be arrested.

I am sure you have seen stories about dumb criminals who leave something behind at the crime scene and are then identified and subsequently arrested. Now I am not talking about a strand of hair, a fingerprint, or any other type of DNA. I am talking about cell phones, wallets, and even phone numbers. This one of those stories:

In 2008, a young man walked into a business in Chicago and attempted to rob the place, but, most of the money was locked up in a safe and the safe could only be opened by the manager. Since the manager was not on the premises, the clerk told him that he would have to come back. So, to avoid the inconvenience of returning when the manager may not be there. The young man gave the clerk his phone number and told her to call him when the manager was in. When he left, the clerk called the police. The police arrived at the shop and told the clerk to call the man. When the man returned, he was promptly arrested.

Okay, I will give you one more. A man in Nebraska was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving. During a search of the vehicle, the police found a 16 ounce plastic container under the driver's seat. In the container was approximately eleven grams of marijuana. That's not the funny part. The funny part is that written on the container were the words: NOT MARIJUANA The man was charged with driving under the influence and charged with possessing less than an ounce of marijuana.